Until the End of the World Carl Schmitt, Apocalypse and the Katechon William Rauscher CCC Papers

s 004

An Angel entraps the Mouth of Hell under lock and key. 1150 AD, author unknown.

The katechon originally appears as a figure in Pauls Second Letter to the Thessalonians, wherein Paul (or the writer standing in for Paul: the authenticity of second Thessalonians remains dubious) describes it as the entity tasked with restraining chaos until the proper arrival of the Last Judgment. In this context, the katechon appears to solve the problem of earthly authority in messianic time: in light of the Thessalonians premature apocalyptic enthusiasm, Paul needs a way to justify obedience to the existing order. Paul says, in effect, that yes, earthly authority will be invalidated when the world ends, but dont go around disobeying this authority just yet, because for now the katechon is prohibiting this event from taking place:

Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you? And you know what is now restraining him, so that he may be revealed when his time comes. For the mystery of

lawlessness is already at work, but only until the one who now restrains it is removed. [Second Thessalonians, 2:3-2:8]1

Paul makes two cryptic references here, to the one who restrains, the katechon (Aufhalter in Luthers translation), and to the lawless one who will appear only after the restrainer has been removed. The restrainer and the lawless one share a relationship of constant antagonism. The lawless one cannot be defeated by the restrainer; instead the restrainer keeps him at bay, repeatedly warding him off, until his time comes, at which point the restrainer is removed so that the lawless one may be allowed to assume power fully and thus usher in the Last Judgment. While the katechon vigilantly protects earthly orders against chaos, his position is in essence temporary, with termination and failure built into the job description. The hedonistic behavior of the Thessalonians prior to Pauls arrival2 signals the danger of allowing lawlessness to operate without the invocation of a restraining force. After all, why should Christians continue to obey the ruling order if the end of the world is imminent, and with it, the invalidation of all earthly authority? This question strikes at a core concern for the Christian
1

All biblical citations from The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Bernhard W. Anderson, Bruce Manning Metzger and Roland Edmund Murphy, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press: 1991). 2 See James D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 298-304.

subject: the need to negotiate between the demands of this world and those of the next. Paul must re-instill a sense of obedience in the messianic-minded Thessalonians, and he attempts this not by brute force or rational persuasion, but through the construction of a theological framework, which derives its efficacy through belief. In this way Paul follows the model for authority as originally developed by Plato. As Hannah Arendt notes, Plato first constructs a theological-political premise, namely the scheme of punishment and reward in the afterlife, as means of inducing obedience without recourse to force or persuasion.3 The most significant difference in Pauls model, however, is that the katechon comes with a deadline. As such it is not intended to validate authority directly, as in Plato, but rather to postpone authoritys de-validation. Thus the katechon is a key element in Pauls attempt to buttress the temporal, finite nature of earthly authority theologically, a crucial stopgap that keeps the end of the world in mind but out of sight. It is not certain, however, that Pauls invocation of the katechon as a means of propping up earthly authority maintains a consistency with the rest of his theology. The eschatology that supports the katechon in Second Thessalonians seems to clash with that of the First, and the discrepancy is
3

See Arendt, What is Authority?, 108.

partly the cause of the long-standing scholarly dispute concerning the authenticity of the Second. Compared with the Paul of the second letter, the Paul of the first is much more concerned with the imminence of the Lords arrival, saying, you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say, There is peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! [1. Th. 5 2-4] Here the two images of a thief and of labor pains allow Paul to figure the arrival of the Messiah as an event of terrifying unpredictability. Within Thessalonians, then, the Messiah acts as a kind of home intruder (a thief in the night), and the katechon as a security guard. The katechon is said to restrain this event until the right time, but prior to Second Thessalonians there is no right time for the event of the Messiah, for Paul understands this time only as unpredictable, incalculable, and unforeseeable. Only one thing is known about the arrival of the Messiah: the proximity of its occurrence to the present. In First Thessalonians it is considered an imminent hope on the horizon, which offered comfort for those in sorrow and motivation for right living for those in a pagan world.4 This imminence is reflected in a number of formulations

Phil Ware, The Coming of the Lord: Eschatology and 1 Thessalonians, Restoration Quarterly Vol. 22 no. 2 (1979), 120.

throughout Pauls letters, mostly explicitly in his announcement in Corinthians that the time is short [1 Cor. 7:29]. The particular conflict between the first and second letters concerning eschatology is directly bound to a larger conflict within Pauls letters concerning the validity of earthly authority. The authority of the Messiahs arrival is founded upon both the vagueness and the urgency of its arrival, which will most certainly be soon, but when exactly cannot be pinpointed. This apocalyptic urgency seems to dissipate, however, in the figure of a restraining force that holds off the End until the appointed time, and with it, a particular justification for obeying Christian moral edicts. With the katechon Paul shifts his moral agenda from promoting the duty of living a good life in preparation for the End to theologically justifying the non-arrival of the Messiah and the perpetuation of the world as it is. Along these lines, the question for Christians that runs throughout Pauls letters is, with an awareness of the worlds end, whom should we obey? Should we obey religious authority at the expense of the political, or is political authority legitimated by the religious as long as the Messiah continues to not arrive? This ambiguity produces a split within the Christian subject, who is supposed to live within the world yet remain aware of its end at the same time.

The uncertain status of earthly authority in Pauls letters provides the possibility for a wide variety of political interpretations, which read his thought as providing the foundation for projects ranging from anarchy to imperialism. 5 An equally broad spectrum of interpretations attempts to reckon with the identities of the katechon and the lawless one. In the Christian tradition the lawless one is usually taken to indicate the Antichrist described in John, who may assume power in the form of a false prophet or emperor. The katechon has provoked more hermeneutic uncertainty: who or what is it that can restrain, but not defeat, the forces of chaos? Felix Grossheutschis exhaustive work follows the trajectory of katechon interpretations from the figures inception in Paul to the numerous invocations throughout Schmitts writings.6 The traditionally dominant interpretation, beginning with Tertullian in the second century and perpetuated by Schmitt in the twentieth, reads the katechon as the Roman Empire. The justification that Tertullian needed for divine legitimacy of the Empire was fairly straightforward: it sufficed enough to ask, if God did not give the Roman Empire dominion, then who did? As Grossheutschi puts it, Die Vorstellung, ein Mensch oder rein Volk knnte in dieser Welt etwas erreichen, gross werden, ohne gttlichen
5

See subsequent chapter on authority and messianism. There is a seemingly conservative, but ultimately ambiguous anomaly: that of Romans 13, which, over and against the rest of Pauls letters seems to offer theological capitulation to the Roman state. 6 Felix Grossheutschi, Carl Schmitt und die Lehre vom Katechon (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1996).

Beistand, war dem antiken wie auch noch dem mittelalterlichen Denken fremd. Von nichts kommt nichts, und ohne verleihende Macht keine verliehene Macht. Also nochmals: Wer oder was hat Rom gross gemacht?7 This argument functions as a kind of precursor to the modern political platitude that might makes right: here Tertullians argument is that might was made right, that the Imperium is right because it sheer size indicates a divine influence. According to Tertullian, the great obligation to pray for the emperors prosperity comes from our realization that the tremendous force which is hanging over the whole world, and the very end of the world with its threat of dreadful afflictions, is arrested for a time by the continuance of the Roman Empire. This event we have no desire to experience, and in praying that it may be deferred, we favor the continuance of Rome.8 With his emphasis on the dreaded afflictions that we have no desire to experience, Tertullian ramps up a negative sense of anticipation for the end of days and thus places the katechon in a positive light. As Grossheutschi points out, however, the championing of the katechon is not historically universal: Die Gleichsetzung Roms mit dem Aufhaltenden findet sich bei Irenus und Hippolyt, wobei allerdingszumindest bei Hippolytdamit eine negative Wertung verbunden
7 8

Grossheutschi, Katechon, 45. Ch. 32, Sec. 1 in Tertullian, Apologetic Works, trans. Joseph Daly and Edwin A. Quain (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 88.

wird; bei Aristides und Justin wird aus dem Katechon ein positiver Wert; Melito macht aus dem antichristlichen Rom eine heilsgeschichtliche Grsse. Schliesslich wird aus alledem das bergende Rom als wnschwertes Katechon.9 The figure of the katechon gains meaning depending on which particular end of the world is being envisioned: the end that brings dreaded afflictions, or the one which instantiates universal redemption. A number of counter-interpretations locate the katechon outside the precincts of imperial authority. The most radical of these is perhaps the one put forth by the Frankish monk Walafried Strabo in the ninth century. Strabo places the eschatological force of restraint within the faith practiced by the individual subjects who together comprise the Christian community. As long as the general faith is strong, evil has no possibility of establishing its dominion. Only first when faith weakens, does the Antichrist arrive. While a key contribution to anti-imperial readings of the katechon, Strabos interpretation suffers from theological imprecision. If we follow the narrative thread that undergirds Pauls understanding of divine providence, then we must see the arrival of the Antichrist as a necessary way-station on the path towards the end of days. Within Strabos reading, then, a weakening of faith in the community would ultimately set in motion the events leading to the Messiahs
9

Grossheutschi, Katechon, 51.

return! We should not read this rather quizzical causality as being unique to Strabo, however, as it is endemic to the problem of evil in monotheism. The impossibility for monotheism to resolve the role of evil in the universe would certainly appear, from the standpoint of reason, to provide excellent grounds for discrediting its theology as a means of human understanding on a rational basis. What better condemnation of monotheistic theology could there be than its inability to explain the role of evil in a universe ruled by a single, omnipotent and supposedly benevolent force? Against this claim, a number of twentieth-century encounters with theology, such as those by Taubes, Scholem and others, have attempted to show that it is precisely the impossibilities of theology, its aporias, breakdowns and deadlocks which contribute to its historical life. Taubes goes so far as to say that the hour of theology strikes during historical instances in which religious symbols no longer correspond to human experience.10 We might say along these lines that the history of theology is a history of attempts to reckon with such impossibilities, that the impossibilities of theology are at the same time the conditions of its possibility, as they offer the possibility for theology to forever reconstitute itself in the flux of historical experience.

10

Taubes, Vom Kult zur Kultur, 230.

10

Following Taubes, we can say that it is a mistake to hold theology accountable on a rational basis for the same reason that one cannot judge art in this way: the constitutive incompleteness of the icon, the sign, the symbol, the image, contribute to the inexhaustibility of its meaning. The katechon is an exemplary case of this sort of inexhaustible significance, with the alluring mystery of Pauls apocalyptic showdown between the restrainer and the lawless one provoking a wide field of hypotheses. Schmitt, by all accounts the prime instigator of discourse on the katechon in the twentieth-century, was by no means immune to the katechon's provocative mystery: his work bears numerous revisions, inversions and re-evaluations of the figure, both during the time of his eager collaboration with National Socialism and in the aftermath of the Second World War. Before it obtains a paradigmatic status in Nomos der Erde the katechon makes a series of brief appearances in several of Schmitts texts. While in Nomos der Erde Schmitt will refer to the katechon as a Begriff, his earlier encounters with the katechon are so diverse from one another as to foreclose on the prospect of subsuming these encounters under a conceptual rubric. Tracing these earlier encounters can contribute to a broader understanding of the stakes of this figure in Schmitts work by marking certain theoretical revisions and deviations, and these markings in turn can further our discussion

11

of the problem of authority in the discourse on the theological-political in twentieth-century Germany. Schmitt mentions the katechon some ten times in the course of his Glossarium journals, written between 1947 and 1951. Of these ten, the entry from December 19th, 1947 provides perhaps the most direct explication of Schmitts interest in the Biblical figure: Ich glaube an den Katechon; er ist fr mich die einzige Mglichkeit, als Christ Geschichte zu verstehen und sinnvoll zu finden. Die paulinische Geheimlehre ist nicht mehr und ebenso viel geheim wie jede christliche Existenz. Wer nicht selber in concreto etwas vom katechon weiss, kann die Stelle nicht deuten.11 This entry provides us with several significant insights into the varying roles of the katechon in Schmitts thinking. First, the katechon here is presented as a matter of belief. As Grossheutschi puts it, Als Glaubenssatz ist der Aufhalter aber nicht nur eine theoretische Angelegenheit, sondern ebenso eine Frage der Erfahrung, der christlichen Existenz.12 Second, it should not be lost on us that a mere two years after the destruction of Nazi Germany, the movements chief legal architect now asserts that only a figure of the apocalypse can offer up the right perspective on history. By right what is meant of course is a Christian, specifically Roman
11

Carl Schmitt, Glossarium, Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991), 63. 12 Grossheutschi, Katechon, 78.

12

Catholic perspective. In the postwar era, when German writing largely turned its gaze away from the sight of its own catastrophic ruins, of buildings, lives, ideals and history, Schmitt remained resolutely attuned towards destruction under the presumption that the end of the world does not only mean the end of history, it grants shape to historys own unfolding. This attunement is roughly congruent with the sense of dread that Gershom Scholem characterizes as one of the two predominant religious attitudes towards the arrival of the Messiah, the other being hope.13 Elsewhere in the Glossarium Schmitt indicates that the possibility of reading history stems from locating the katechon within each particular era. Man muss fr jede Epoche der letzten 1948 Jahre den Katechon nennen knnen. Der Platz war niemals unbesetzt, sonst wren wir nicht mehr vorhanden.14 In this context, the katechon becomes pluralized, a role capable of being adopted by various historical agents, and the very fact that there has been history serves as proof that the role of the katechon has indeed been taken on each time. Schmitts statement invokes a kind of political-theoretical parlor game: call it name that katechon. But how does one apply the figure of the katechon
13

See Gershom Scholem, Zum Verstndnis der messianischen Idee im Judentum, in Judaica 3: Studien zur jdischen Mystik. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970). 14 Schmitt, Glossarium, 63.

13

as means for understanding historical change, as Schmitt wants to do? In answering this question one cannot ignore the fact that a positive understanding of the katechon in Schmitts work can only be found in texts written after the conclusion of Second World War: in den Schriften aus der Zeit nach dem Krieg ist die Bezeichnung Katechon fr Schmitt gleichsam eine Art Ehrentitel.15 Prior to the defeat of Nazi Germany, the only entities which Schmitt calls katechons are the various enemies of National Socialism, those empires whose power and influence act to restrain or retard the historical destiny carried out by National Socialism. In the 1942 essay Beschleuniger wider Willen, the katechonic effect of delaying world history is considered the law of all aging empires.16 Great Britains political existence had been ruled by this katechonic law governing aging empires since the late nineteenth century, and in the twentieth century the United States was now subject to the same logic, functioning first as Aufhalter und Verzgerer,17 only to then turn into the paradox of the accelerator despite itself.18 In contrast, Schmitt celebrates the Nazis imperial project as an accelerator or grosser Beweger. In this context, the katechon appears as a negative concept, not

15 16

Grossheutschi, Katechon, 105. Carl Schmitt, Beschleuniger wider Willen in Staat, Grossraum, Nomos: Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1916-1969 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1995), 436. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid.

14

restraining the end of the world, but the arrival of a new eon, specifically the thousand-year Reich. The valuation of the concept of the katechon depends entirely on how Schmitt conceives the movement of history. Grossheutschi observes that, viewed on the whole, Schmitts katechons can be divided into local and universal types, each caught up in restraining a respective historical process.19 Local katechons are negative, they are merely in the way of history, and function within a determined, narrow historical space: these include Masayrk, Pilsudsky, Kaiser Franz Joseph, Rudolf II, Byzanz, who restrain through their action or, in the case of the Kaiser, by virtue of their mere existence. Grossheutschi further differentiates the universal into the historically immanent and the historically transcendental. Universal immanent types of the katechon include the British Empire, Savigny, as well as Hegel, who restrain a general course of history. The only positive form of the katechon is the kind which Grossheutschi identifies as the universal-transcendentalfor example, Donoso Cortes, the Roman church and the medieval Roman Empire, who, according to Grossheutschi, restrain nothing less than the end

19

See Grossheutschi, Katechon, 103-107.

15

of the world, and thus signify the only form of the katechon which would for Schmitt carry a historical-theological necessity. The problem with this claim lies in a confusion concerning the ambiguity of Schmitts use of the katechon, a confusion that Grossheutschi himself notes when he states that Schmitt combines "auf eigenartige Weise zwei Deutungen des Katechon miteinander: Zum einen der heilsgeschichtliche Aufhalter des realen, physischen Endes der Weltveranschaulicht an den mittelalterlichen Kaisern; zum anderen der Aufhalter als notwendige Kategorie echten historischen Denkens. Der bergang ist fleissend, und es stellt sich die Frage, ob fr Schmitt grosse Geschichtsschreibung letztlich mit Theologie zusammenfsst oder zumindest die Rolle einer ancilla theologiae einnimmt, ode res ihm hier nur um eine formale Analogie zu tun ist."20 In identifying Cortes, the Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire as the only form of positive katechons, Grossheutschi falls victim to the ambiguity he points out in Schmitt between the two forms of katechon. Properly speaking, the only katechon that protects against the real end of the world is the one which appears in Second Thessalonians. For Schmitt, the katechon of the Holy Roman Empire is already a category of real historical thinking, and whoever or whatever fulfills the role of the katechon during that time does so
20

Grossheutschi, Katechon, 91.

16

to protect one particular empire, not the world as such, a point to which we will shortly return in greater detail. The discussion of katechon in Nomos der Erde is most relevant to our interest in authority in twentieth-century German political theology because it is here, in Schmitts analysis of the Holy Roman Empire, that the figure becomes bound up with his concern for "concrete orientation":

In der konkreten Ortung auf Rom, nicht in Normen und allgemeinen Ideen, liegt die Kontinuitt, die das mitteralterliche Vlkerrecht mit dem Rmischen Reich verbindet. Diesem christlichen Reich ist es wesentlich, dass es kein ewiges Reich ist, sondern sein eigenes Ende und das Ende des gegenwrtigen Aon im Auge behlt und trotzdem einer geschichtlichen Macht fhig ist. Der entscheidende geschichtsmchtige Begriff seiner Kontinuitt ist der des Aufhalters, des Katechon. Reich bedeutet hier die geschichtliche Macht, die das Erscheinen des Antichrist und das Ende des gegenwrtigen Aon aufzuhalten vermag, eine Kraft,

17

qui tenet, gemss den Worten des Apostels Paulus im 2. Thessalonicherbrief, Kapitel 2.21

It should be noted, first of all, that here the figure of the katechon has become a concept [Begriff]. This is part of Schmitts political-theological translation work, or to put it another way, Schmitts understanding of political theology as translation, as the ber-setzen of elements from the field of theology to the field of politics. The identification of katechon as Reich allows Schmitt to understand the empire as the power tasked with deferring the end of the world. This concept of the Reich gives the law, the Volkerrecht, its concrete orientation, providing it with a focus, a Weltanschauung that is as grandly encompassing as it is fatally urgent, established not through norms or general ideas but by being concretely oriented towards Rome. An understanding of the katechon as that which orients reflects Schmitts promotion of the term Nomos in its original Greek sense as meaning a fixed orientation in terms of space and land.22 As such, the katechon belongs to Schmitts general theoretical project of recuperating this privileged form of orientation through the excavation of the occluded theological characters
21

Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde im Vlkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1950), 29. 22 Schmitt, Nomos, 64.

18

behind political concepts. As Schmitt outlines in Politische Theologie, only a politics conscious of its limits, origins and ultimate fate can properly secure and defend itself, and such a consciousness can only be provided by theological concepts such as the katechon.23 Schmitt turns to the katechon in a retrieval effort that initially nostalgizes the lost world of the medieval respublica Christiana twice-over. First, Schmitt privileges the unity of church authority and imperial power which allowed the church to mandate and thus "concretely orient" imperial actions according to a katechonic consciousness. This privileging reflects an elegiac note throughout Nomos der Erde struck for the subsequent withdrawal of church authority into the private sphere, thus depriving political power of its "proper" orientation. The katechon isnt only a stamp of legitimacy issued by church authority for the sake of imperial power, however: crucially for Schmitt, it also acts as a bridge-concept which effectively guarantees the very perpetuation of this authority against the threats of eschatological paralysis and the efficacy of mystic prophecy:

Ich glaube nicht, da fr einen ursprnglich christlichen Glauben ein anderes Geschichtsbild als das des Katechon berhaupt
23

See in this context Karl Lwiths introduction to his Meaning in History.

19

mglich ist. Der Glaube, da ein Aufhalter das Ende der Welt zurckhlt, schlgt die einzige Brcke, die von der eschatologischen Lhmung alles menschlichen Geschehens zu einer so gro artigen Geschichtsmchtigkeit wie der des christlichen Kaisertums der germanischen Knige fhrt. Die Autoritt von Kirchenvtern und Schriftstellern wie Tertullian, Hieronymus und Lactantius Firmianus, und die christliche Fortfhrung sibyllinischer Weissagungen vereinigen sich in der berzeugung, da nur das Imperium Romanum und seine christliche Fortsetzung den Bestand des Aon erklren und ihn gegen die berwltigende Macht des Bsen erhalten. Das war bei den germanischen Mnchen ein lichtvoller, christlicher Glaube von strkster, geschichtlicher Kraft, und wer die Stze Haimos von Halberstadt oder Adsos nicht von den truben Orakeln des Pseudomethodius oder der tiburtinischen Sibylle zu unterscheiden vermag, wird das Kaisertum des christlichen Mittelalters nur in flschenden Verallgemeinerungen und Parallelen mit nicht-christlichen Machtphnomenen, aber nicht in seiner konkreten Geschichtlichkeit begreifen knnen.24
24

Schmitt, Nomos, 29-30.

20

Here Schmitt includes the church fathers among those representatives of earthly authority who enjoy katechonic protection from eschatological paralysis. In contrast, Pauls letter, written before the establishment of the church institution, concerns itself only with imperial authority. The dread experienced by Tertullian and his ilk at the thought of the apocalypse, combined with their distaste for prophecy and endorsement of the katechon, can be attributed to their fear of losing of authority. In this light the endorsement of the katechon takes on a distinctly self-serving veneer, becoming a justification from those in charge as to why they should remain so. Schmitt, however, does not aim to invalidate the anti-authoritative claim of prophecy in the name of the Church, instead he uses the katechon as a bridge, allowing institutional authority to persevere over time despite antiauthoritative intrusions from hostile forces. The value of the katechons eschatological view lies in the political awareness of finitude that it produces. The production of this awareness belongs to a profoundly existential strain in Schmitts thinking, which effectively promotes a kind of political being-towards-death necessary for political identity and survival. Only an awareness of death, in its unpredictability and finality, can produce the urgency necessary for the perpetuation of political order.

21

Schmitts theories are peopled with deaths many faces: emergency, threat, enemy and apocalypse, all which must be routinely, vigilantly confronted so that the political order can remain concretely oriented. The shadow cast by death discloses an orders concrete contours, and gives shape to an orders equally concrete Aufgaben und Missionen.25 In the context of the katechon as a concept during the Holy Roman Empire, the disclosive shadow of death is cast over the whole of history. Throughout the course of Nomos der Erde, however, Schmitt invokes the katechon less and less as a particular historical figure and more and more as a generalized concept of theologically-supported political finitude. As a result of this rhetorical shift in Schmitt's use of the figure, deaths shadow gets scaled down. Paralleling the displacement from miracle to sovereign exception in Politische Theologie, as the katechon comes to embody a general political concept, it loses the universal applicability found in its original theological context and gets retrofitted by Schmitt to each time accommodate a particular political milieu. Pauls katechon postpones the entire world from ending, while Schmitts generalized katechon postpones the end for a particular empire. Julia Hell elaborates on the historical stakes of this displacement when she reads Schmitts katechon as a scopic ruin-gazer scenario, in which the
25

Ibid., 31.

22

imperial sovereignempire or emperorwho, with its or his eyes fixed on the end of time, prepares for a political battle to delay that very end. Contending with Mehrings claim that this scenario reflects a politicized theology of history which conceives of the end as historically meaningful,26 Hell argues that we understand Schmitts katechon as a re-conceptualization of the trope of imperial decline, a re-conceptualization that does not require the idea of a meaningful endingmerely the understanding that empires do eventually come to an end. . . . In sum, we are not dealing with a theological politics of empire that has eschatology as its very substance, but a form of imperial theology, that is, a politics of empire that feeds on the remnants of eschatological history and their abandoned meanings.27 The foodstuff upon which Schmitts "politics of empire" feeds is thus the remnants of a certain ruin-gazer scenario. In effect, Schmitts politics feeds on the ruins of ruins, on an image of historical ruins itself eroded down to ruined form by the course of time.28 Without pausing to consider whether an "imperial theology" is really the

26

See Reinhard Mehring, Karl Lwith, Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes und das Ende der Geschichte, Zeitschrift fr Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 48.3 (1996): 234. 27 Julia Hell, Katechon: Carl Schmitts Imperial Theology and the Ruins of the Future, The Germanic Review Vol 84, Number 4 (Fall 2009): 311. 28 In general, Schmitt tends to treat the remnants he finds among these ruins as plug-and-play tools, ready right out of the box to be inserted into political theoryanything else is most likely to be returned to the historical scrap heap of theology from when it came. We recall, for example, that while Schmitt famously asserts in Politische Theologie that alle prgnanten Begriffe der modernen Staatslehre sind skularisierte theologische Begriffe, (Politische Theologie, 44), he contends only with the concept of sovereignty.

23

same as a "politics of empire," we will affirm that Hell is right to stress, over and against Mehring, that Schmitts project does not require or affirm the full resurrection of a theological view of history, but rather moves among its hollowed-out structures looking for useful scraps. Mehrings point of view lines up with Grossheutschis hermeneutic slip mentioned earlier, in which he assigns to Schmitts positive katechons the kind of theological view of history which Hell dismisses as unsuited for Schmitts thought. Before approaching the role of the katechon in Schmitts new nomos, let us outline in greater detail the relation between authority and power in the katechons medieval incarnation as Schmitt understands it. As previously stated, Schmitt understands the concept as originally referring to a political power whose legitimacy is granted by a religious authority: the pope legitimates the emperor, who then sets out on the sort of concrete tasks and missions designed to protect the empire, to stave off disorder, to effectively restrain the Antichrist from appearing. The church acts as guarantor or signator for the emperors actions, by signing off on the katechonic significance of these actions and thus effectively controlling their interpretations. One imagines that, sent off on his missions, the emperor bears a sort of letter signed and sealed by the church, with a stamp reading Official Katechon.

24

Schmitts concern for the development of a theological consciousness in political practice is not only a matter of conceiving proper action, such as the defense of a nation or the acquisition of territory, it is also a matter of cultivating a consciousness for why these actions are taking place, a consciousness which can orient these actions within a framework. For Schmitt, the Holy Roman Empire maintained this consciousness through the legitimation of imperial praxis as katechonic by the authority of the church. This legitimation was possible, Schmitt argues, because of the profound unity of medieval Christendom and its "supreme power."29 This unity was confirmed by the kings use of imperial names imperator and imperiaand their reception of mandates from the pope. These mandates used church authority to imperial praxis as katechonic. Schmitt underscores that the emperors office was ein Auftrag, der aus einer vllig anderen Sphre stammt als die Wrde des Knigtums . . . 30 The emperor can nach Vollendung eines Kreuzzuges seiner Kaiserkrone in aller Demut und Bescheidenheit niederlegen, ohne sich etwas zu vergeben. Er tritt dann

29

This unity, Schmitt argues, encompasses the seats of emperor and pope as antitheses: The medieval West and Central European unity of imperium and sacerdotium was never a centralized accumulation of power in the hands of one person. From the beginning, it rested on the distinction between potestas and auctoritas as two distinct lines of order of the same encompassing unity. Thus, the antitheses of emperor and pope were not absolute, but rather diversi ordines in which the order of the respublica Christiana resided. See Schmitt, Nomos, 30. 30 Schmitt, Nomos, 31.

25

aus der erhhten Reichsstellung in seine natrliche Stellung zurck und ist dann nur noch Knig seines Landes.31 The status of imperial power as a temporary entity designed to address particular cases in which the political order requires defense should recall the status of the sovereign dictator that Schmitt outlined some thirty years previously. Schmitt thus clandestinely swathes his own theories of the sovereign state of exception in historical legitimacy. Katechon, then, is another name for the sovereign, and we can find the modern sovereign of Politische Theologie already inscribed within the tradition of the katechon. Historically this tradition remains alive as long as auctoritas retains its political efficacy: Selbst als die kaiserliche potestas in der Wirklichkeit zu einem machtlosen Namen geworden war, bestand die umfassende Gesamtordnung des mittelalterlichen europischen Vlkerrechts weiter, solange die auctoritas des Papstes ausreichte, Missionsauftrge und Kreuzzugsmandate zu erteilen und neue Missionsgebiete zu verleihen. 32 The Popes auctoritas suffices to preserve order because preservation is a matter of existential orientation, which the sacerdotium can offer as long as it is allowed to flourish in the public sphere.

31 32

Ibid., 32. Ibid., 35.

26

Following his celebration of the political-theological unity perfected by the Holy Roman Empire, Schmitt marks the various forces responsible for subsequently undermining this unity and occulting the katechonic orientation: ein Zeichen der Auflsung des mittelalterlichen christlichen Reiches, da sich (seit dem 13. Jahrhundert) politische Einheiten bilden, die sich nicht nur tatschlich, sondern immer mehr auch rechtlich dem Imperium entziehen, whrend sie die Auctoritas des Sacerdotium auf rein geistige Dinge abzudrngen suchen.33 Not only was the auctoritas slowly reined in over time, thus depriving imperial power of its katechonic orientation, but repetitions of pre-Christian influences also began to compete with the Christian church in the realm of politics: mittelalterliche Renovationen, Reproduktionen und Repristinationen antik-heidnischer Begriffe34 began to emerge which represented the deepest antithesis to the political-theological unity of the respublica Christiana. The revival of pre-Christian influence in the political sphere produced a new form of Caesarism that for Schmitt lost any authentic sense of orientation or history, obscuring the katechonic perspective, and with it the crucial awareness that political power was ineluctably mortal: the "Caesars" of the middle ages failed or refused to acknowledge their own

33 34

Ibid., 34. Ibid., 32.

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finitude as political agents, and so abandoned the essential framework for effective political consciousness. One does not have to look hard to observe that Schmitt has set up these renovations, reproductions, and revivals of ancient heathen concepts to collectively form a disparaged double to his own efforts at retrieving elements of Christian theology. It is supposedly matter of nothing less than the "deepest antithesis" between the idealized unity of auctoritas and potestas that underwrites the katechon on the one hand and those heathen engagements on the other. These engagements are already figured in the sort of paranoiac language familiar to anyone versed in Schmitts writings on enmity. Within the contested territory of the theological-political, Schmitt effectively plays the katechon himself, protecting the unity of auctoritas and potestas against its multiple enemies, who are bent on disseminating inferior simulacra of Schmitts own invocation of ancient theology. What, finally, separates Schmitts invocations of Christian theology from these renovations, reproductions and revivals? Do they differ merely by object, or by method as well? Since for Schmitt the Christian framework is innately superior to its competitors because of its relation to concrete life, that is, to finitude. Other theological frameworks provide only abstract notions of eternity. Schmitt appropriates the Christian framework of history because it is

28

conscious of a beginning and an end, of a finitude divinely-ordained, and thus purposeful.35 This appropriation marks a desire within right-wing twentiethcentury German thought, embodied by Schmitt, Heidegger and Jnger, to mark finitude and then inscribe it within a heroic, destinal sense of purpose.36 Methodologically, Schmitt approaches Christian concepts from a perspective which disregards the divinity of their authority. It is not because these concepts are ordained or legislated by the Christian God, and thus one does not incorporate them into political theory out of respect or fear of this Gods authority. One approaches these theological elements rather by acknowledging the superior efficacy of their structures: Schmitt privileges them not because they are divinely right, but because they work. Schmitt assumes the success of these structures because the conceptual antithesis, the bureaucratic form of the Weimar-era government, has clearly failed. Schmitt uses this theologically-guided "concrete orientation" to support the construction of a new nomos, which occurs at the end of a historical trajectory stretching from the Holy Roman Empire to the postwar twentiethcentury. When following this trajectory one can observe Schmitt grapple with the progressive withdrawal of authority from the political sphere: from the
35 36

See Lwiths introduction, Meaning in History. See Susan Buck-Morss, Sovereign Right and the Global Left, Cultural Critique No. 69 (Spring 2008): 145-171.

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idealized unity of authority and power in antiquity, through the pale attempts at legitimacy in the form of the Versailles Treaty, towards the new nomos, which he must devise a means to support. The question remains whether the means of support that Schmitt offers can be schematized according to the analytics of authority and power that Arendt establishes. Part of the force behind this support lies undoubtedly in the occasionally mythic, occasionally prophetic character of Schmitts discourse, in which he issues statements such as I speak of a new nomos of the earth.37 Such vague declarations can be read not only as resulting from their status as future-oriented predictions, but as implicit efforts to re-capture the lost force of religious auctoritas in encrypted form. Schmitts effort to legitimate his new nomos in the absence of traditional authority also repeats his typically ambiguous form of analysis which simultaneously describes a situation as it purportedly is, but also how it should be, once various forces of occultation have been removed.38 But unlike earlier works such as Politische Theologie, in which such an analysis remained a latent source of ambiguity, Nomos der Erde foregrounds this double quality as

37

See Schmitt, Nomos, 187-209. So handelt es sich fr uns um den fr jede geschichtliche Epoche wesentlichen, raum-einteilenden Grundvorgang, um das Struktur-bestimmende Zusammentreffen von Ordnung und Ortung im Zusammenleben der Vlker auf dem inzwischen wissenschaftlich vermessenen Planeten. Schmitt, Nomos, 49.
38

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belonging to a nomos grasped in its originary meaning: Trotz jener, schon in der klassischen Zeit eintretende Vernderung der Denk- und Ausdrucksweise ist stets erkennbar geblieben, dal das Wort Nomos ursprnglich keineswegs eine blosse Setzung angibt, in de Sein und Sollen getrennt und die Raumstruktur einer konkreten Ordnunj au er Acht gelassen werden knnte. Diese sptere Verwendung gehrt vielmehr zum Sprachgebrauch einer absinkenden Zeit, die sich nicht mehr mit ihrem Ursprung und Anfang zu verbinden wute . . .39 In its restored unity of the is and the ought, which meet one another in the existential affirmation of the founding act, the nomos to come is always-already that which has been at work throughout history. Above all, however, the new nomos contends with the modern withdrawal of authority through its evental force. Its authority no longer stems from its continuity with the past, or from its embodiment of a tradition. As reactionary as Schmitt is, and as nostalgia-tinged as his analysis might appear, he is only interested in promoting his conservatism from within the bounds of historical possibility: with the binds of church authority having been broken by its retreat into the private sphere, what remains is the possibility of constituting authority in evental form, through the self-foundation of the nomos. Der Nomos im ursprnglichen Sinne aber ist grade die volle Unmittelbarkeit
39

Ibid., 38-39.

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einer nicht durch Gesetze vermittelten Rechtskraft; er ist ein konstituierendes geschichtliches Ereignis, ein Akt der Legitimitt, der die Legalitt des bloen Gesetzes berhaupt erst sinnvoll macht.40 For Schmitt, legitimacy concerns the institution and control of meaning, it makes the legality of the law meaningful in the first place. In its evental self-foundation, the nomos grants legitimacy, in other words, authority, to the law. Schmitts conception of nomos as a foundational act betrays a revolutionary tendency that would appear to be at odds with conservatism and the katechonic conception of political order. A separate inquiry would be needed to mark the contaminations of revolutionary rhetoric within Schmitts avowed counter-revolutionary discourse, this would further mark certain affinities between far-left and far-right political theories.41 Suffice to say here that the thrust of decisionism behind the sovereign exception in Politische Theologie becomes identified in Nomos der Erde with the foundation of political order itself, substituting for the traditional form of authority founded on the past.

40 41

Ibid., 42. Jacob Taubes details this at-times subterranean affinity extensively in Die Politische Theologie des Paulus. See also Jan-Werner Mller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) and Gopal Balakrishnan, The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt (London: Verso, 2000).

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The trace of the theological is not limited here to nomos evental status, it also concerns nomos ability to "concretely orient." To this effect Schmitt offers that nomos can als eine Mauer bezeichnet werden, weil auch die Mauer auf sakralen Ortungen beruht.42 Sacred for Schmitt always means concrete. Walls are sacred because they demarcate territories and peoples. Concrete orientation belongs to Schmitts repertoire of concepts, along with Ausnahmezustand and katechon itself, which aim to reckon with the fate of politics in an era of authoritys decline. Orientation in particular is a vocabulary word that Schmitt shares with Arendt, as both express philosophical interest in the modern need for a people to orient themselves in history once certain traditional supports or bolsters have withdrawn. Both Schmitt and Arendt take recourse to ancient Rome in their efforts to address this modern need. The Roman Empire becomes for Schmitt the paradigm of political order because of its "concrete orientation," in which everything in the Imperium Romanum is oriented towards Rome itself. In much the same way, Arendt privileges the Roman Empire as the exemplary locus of traditional authority, in which, according to a kind of centripetal politics, all is derived from Rome.

42

Schmitt, Nomos, 40.

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Schmitts new nomos finds its model of impossible imitation in the concept of the katechon in the Holy Roman Empire: the deployment of this concept and its attendant "concrete orientation" acts a double-bind for the nomos because the katechon represents an idealized model whose imitation has been foreclosed upon by the course of history, in part due to the withdrawal of religious authority from the public sphere. Schmitt will have to find another way to guarantee or legitimate "concrete orientation." He attests that hes not interested in "conjuring acts," or in breathing "artificial new life" into old concepts,43 thus rhetorically cordoning off his theoretical project from certain precincts of spectrality and technology. Considering the extent to which Schmitt compresses and regiments his rhetoric, it is difficult to imagine that the contrast which these paganisms pose to Schmitts political Catholicism is anything accidental. That is to say, the Catholicism of Schmitts politics extends as well to the maintenance of a border between the dead and living, specifically, between concepts that are dead and concepts that are still alive, and Schmitt, in typical form, seeks to police this border by disavowing its relation to conjurers of the dead and the Doctor Frankensteins of artificial life. In his political theology, the dead, Schmitt emphatically claims, will not come
43

Ibid., 38: Wenn ich demgegenber das Wort Nomos wieder in seinem ursprnglicher Sinne verwende, so geschieht das nicht, um toten Mythen ein knstliches neue: Leben einzuhauchen oder leere Schatten zu beschwren.

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back to life: no ghosts here! he says, because a Catholic knows that only God can breathe life into dead concepts. Schmitts disavowal of the spectral and the technological in this case indexes a central concern for twentieth-century discourse on the theologicalpolitical: the status and stakes of secularization.44 It is no coincidence that Schmitt is allergic to trafficking with conceptual ghosts. To deal with or produce phantoms would go against Schmitts political theory which, as we have said, is suffused with death, obsessed with identifying it, controlling it, naming it, in the face of threats, finitude, and the enemy. Schmitt's defense of his theoretical strategy against pagan enemies refers us again to the broader problem of tradition which, as detailed in the introduction, so consumes twentieth-century German political thought. This breakdown is what causes authority to become a problem for theologicalpolitical thought. Schmitt must rhetorically cordon off his nomos project from rivals who illegitimately trespass into the past, because he accepts an

44

As Laurence Rickels notes, the secular era is marked by a proliferation of ghosts, of life unbounded from the demarcations enforced by religious authority. See Rickels, The Vampire Lectures (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 22: There emerged, then, in our modern secular era, in the new cleaned-up place of deaths representation, an uncontrollable blending of boundaries between life and death. Death was growing uncanny, unburiable, unframeable, unrepresentable, unmournable.

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irrevocable breakdown in tradition as such and seeks to access an auctoritas that can survive without traditions continuity.45 Schmitts reading of the katechon offers an exemplary case for our inquiry into the question of authority in twentieth-century German political theology because it sets authority in relation to the problem of the end of the world. We refer to the end of the world as a problem because it is not certain, philosophically or theologically or any other way, what this end would be and how we should orient ourselves towards it, if such an orientation were even possible. Because it makes the end of the world a political concern, Schmitts reading of the katechon as a figure of authority should be evaluated along a concurrent political-theological thinking of messianism in twentieth-century Germany. By adopting the katechon as the central figure for a theologicallymotivated thinking of political order, Schmitt pulls off a significant sleight-ofhand, condensing the two destructive-redemptive poles of the apocalypse into one phenomenon: the messianic event. This condensation pumps up the theological feeling of dread associated with the destructive wrath of the Antichrist, expanding it into a more generalized fear of the Messiahs return,

45

Arendt marks the essential dependency of authority on tradition in her essay, see Between Past and Future, 127.

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and using this fear to legitimate the need to protect sovereign authority accordingly. This condensation ultimately allows Schmitt to read the messianic event as a metaphor for the onset of political revolution. In this context Taubes reads Schmitts apocalyptics as theological shorthand for his right-wing fear of revolution, hence his designation of Schmitt as the apocalypticist for the counter-revolution.46 Theology thus allows Schmitt to hypostasize political revolution into an event equivalent to the end of the world: in this way Schmitts politics function as the right-wing counterpart to left-wing revolutionary politics infused with messianic or utopic sensibilities. From Taubes perspective, not only Schmitts sovereign but institutional authority as a whole fears Pauls revolutionary declaration separating earthly from divine authority: the Good News is bad news to those in charge, because the salvation of humankind means the necessary termination of their authority. For Taubes this holds just as true for rabbinical Judaism as it does for the sovereign. In this context Elettra Stimilli writes: In Taubes Augen ist jene auch dem Mysterium Judaicum wesentliche katechontische Form der Existenz also dem jdischen Rabbinismus zuzuschreiben, durch den sie zu

46

See Jacob Taubes, Carl Schmitt: ein Apokalyptiker der Gegenrevolution, in Ad Carl Schmitt: Gegenstrebige Fgung (Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1987).

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einer retardierenden und gerade in diesem Sinne politischen Macht geworden ist, nicht unhnlich derjenigen, die Schmitt in der res publica Christiana verwirklicht sieht.47 Taubes sees the institution of Jewish religion as being essentially katechonic, refusing the radicality of the messianic message: for Taubes rabbinical Judaism insists without fail on building immer neue Zune um die Thora,48 in order to protect it against the threat of the messianic event. Taubes offers a schematic reading of Schmitts investment in the katechon in which he positions himself as Schmitts political-theological counterpart: Das Interesse von Schmitt war nur eines: dass die Partei, dass das Chaos nicht nach oben kommt, dass der Staat bleibt. Um welchen Preis auch immer. Das ist fr Theologen und Philosophen schwer nachzuvollziehen; fr den Juristen aber gilt: solange auch nur eine juristiche Form gefunden werden kann, mit welcher Spitzfindigkeit auch immer, ist es unbedingt zu tun, denn sonst regiert das Chaos. Das ist das, was er spter das Katechon nennt: Der Aufhalter, der das Chaos, das von unten drngt, niederhlt. Das ist nicht meine Weltanschauung, das ist nicht meine Erfahrung. Ich kann mir vorstellen als Apokalyptiker: soll sie zugrunde gehn. I have no spiritual investment in the

47

Jacob Taubes, Der Preis des Messianismus, ed. Ellettra Stimilli (Wrzberg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2006), 158. 48 Jacob Taubes, Abendlndische Eschatologie (Berlin: A. Francke, 1947), 25.

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world as it is.49 Taubes here draws attention to the technicity of Schmitts katechonic framework, that the proper juristic form must be found that can keep a lid on apocalyptic pressure from below, regardless of its origin or moral context.50 In contrast to the theologian or the philosopher, the jurist is willing to spare no expense to locate this form. We might say that the jurist in a way the most modern of the three, because his disposition towards concepts resonates the most with scientific inquiry. While Taubes dismisses the katechon from his own side, saying das ist nicht meine Weltanschaaung, das ist nicht meine Erfahrung, it is clear that the katechon belongs to that range of concepts which Taubes believes he must establish himself against as part of his participation in Schmitts program of theoretical enmity. Throughout his Auseinanderzetzung with Schmitt, Taubes is more than happy to sign on to a philosophical polemics which effectively divides a spectrum of ideas into a dualist cosmology, organizing it around a meridian of complementary antagonism. To this effect Taubes essay on Schmitt builds a cosmotheoretical schema in which Carl Schmitt denkt apokalyptisch, aber von oben her, von den Gewalten; ich denke von unten her.51 The katechon is in fact part of Taubes Weltanschaaung, because it is the exact opposite of his
49 50

In English in the original. Taubes, Paulus, 139. Ibid. 51 Taubes, Gegenstrebige Fgung, 22.

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Weltanschaaung, belonging both to the territory of political sovereignty and to the restraining forces within Judaic religion. The katechon in Taubes thus stands for anti-messianic forces in general, and should be read as part of Taubes critique of Scholems reading of messianism: it is not, as Scholem claims, messianism which keeps Jews out of history, but the katechonic forces of organized religion that bulwark against the messianic event by institutionalizing the meaning of the Torah.52 Finally, it is necessary to address some contemporary critiques of Schmitts identification of katechon with Reich. Grossheutschi provides historical evidence of interpretations of the katechon that run counter to the imperial interpretation first promoted by Tertullian. In his extended analysis of the tricky position of Obrigkeit in Pauls letters, Grossheutschi effectively supports these counter-interpretations, arguing that the fundamental indifference of the Christian believer towards earthly authority precludes the possibility of reading katechon as Reich: Eigentlich betrifft die Obrigkeit die Christen nicht mehr, sie ist gleichgltig geworden fr diejenigen, die frei geworden sind von der Snde....Solange die Christen gegenber der Obrigkeit eine pragmatische Haltung einnahmen, gleichweit entfernt von der Vergttlichung wie von der Dmonisierung, bestand kein Grund, das Katechon
52

See Taubes, Der Messianismus und sein Preis in Vom Kult zu Kultur.

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auf Rom zu deuten. Erst als sie gezwungen durch die Zeitumstndeihre neutrale Haltung aufgaben und zu werten begannen, wurde die eschatologische Aufladung Roms mglich.53 Within Pauls perspective, Christians maintain an indifferent or pragmatic Haltung in relation to earthly authority as long as the theological shortness of time, the nearness of the present to the messianic event, retains a real historical efficacy. Only after the messiah defaults on his arrival can the Roman Empire be inscribed within an eschatological framework.54 Given the previously mentioned rhetorical shift between First and Second Thessalonians concerning the status of earthly Obrigkeit, however, it is quite difficult to describe ultimately what sort of relation this "gleichgltigkeit" might be. The very space of hermeneutic openness that surrounds this ambiguous term has in part contributed over time to theological-political variants. We recall that for Schmitt an imperialized katechon is die einzige Mglichkeit, als Christ Geschichte zu verstehen und sinnvoll zu finden. In light of Grossheutschis reading, we can say that yes, the katechon does represent the possibility of understanding history from a Christian perspective, but this

53 54

Grossheutschi, Katechon, 25. See Taubes, Vom Kult zu Kultur, 230.

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possibility only opens up in the wake of the Messiahs non-arrival, in the failed terminus of Pauline eschatology and the persistent continuation of history. The most recent sustained critique of Schmitts interpretation of the katechon comes from Giorgio Agamben, who reads Second Thessalonians with a strong emphasis on katagerein, the rendering inoperative or delegitimizing of every power in messianic time. Addressing Schmitts imperial reading, Agamben writes that every theory of the State, including Hobbes which thinks of it as a power destined to block or delay catastrophecan be taken as a secularization of this interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 2. Yet the fact remains that despite its obscurity, this Pauline passage does not harbor any positive valuation of the katechon. To the contrary, it is what must be held back in order that the 'mystery of anomia' be revealed fully.'55 "Anomia," Agamben stresses, should not be translated as iniquity or sin, but should mean only absence of law. Paul, in fact, presents himself to the Gentiles as the one outside the law. Anomia is the condition of the law in messianic time, its state of being "rendered inoperative." For Agamben, the "unveiling" of the mystery of anomia, which occurs when the katechon is "removed," is an act or event akin to the deconstruction

55

Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: a commentary on the letter to the Romans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 110.

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of authority if we take notice here of another example of rhetorical slippage between power, authority and force. The katechon is therefore the forcethe Roman Empire as well as every constituted authoritythat clashes with and hides katargesis, the state of tendential lawlessness that characterizes the messianic, and in this sense delays unveiling the mystery of lawlessness. The unveiling of this mystery entails bringing to light the inoperativity of the law and the substantial illegitimacy of each and every power in Messianic time. . . . It is therefore possible to conceive of katechon and anomos not as two separate figures, but as one single power before and after the final unveiling. 56 The katechon is an authority such as the Roman Empire, which stands in the way of the unveiling of the illegitimacy of all earthly authority. In reading the katechon as an authority flipped over in messianic time to reveal its essential illegitimacy Agamben essentially ascribes a globalized deconstructive capacity to the messianic event. A small but crucial rhetorical shift here underscores, however, a broader critical tension concerning authority in Agambens thought. Agamben begins his closing argument against the imperialized katechon with the statement that it is possible to conceive that in fact the katechon and anomos are one and the same, and then finishes with the dramatic conclusion that as a
56

Ibid., 111.

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result of this possibility, 2 Thessalonians 2 may not be used to found a Christian doctrine of power in any manner whatsoever.57 What begins as a conjecture or hypothesis in Agambens reading gathers steam until at the end of the paragraph it becomes the ground for a categorical dismissal of the imperial reading of the katechon. This shift from open conjecture to certainty when critically dismantling an imperial ideology is indicative of Agambens general systematic deconstruction of earthly authority which in turn subtly installs Agamben himself in the authoritative positionif for Derrida what is undeconstructible is called justice, for Agamben what is undeconstructible is called Agamben.58 Readers of Agamben will no doubt observe the central role that Walter Benjamin plays in the ontological contours specific here to Agambens reading of Saint Paul. Agambens emphasis on a messianic inoperativity of the law is culled from Benjamins political-theological writings, specifically from Benjamins understanding of splinters of messianic time that create discontinuous, crystalline Stillstands within the course of history.59 Furthermore, the view to a profound congruence between Benjamin and Paul
57 58

Ibid. Derrida reads similar cases of Agambens rhetorical slides in The Beast and the Sovereign, see 324332. 59 See Walter Benjamin and the Demonic: Happiness and Historical Redemption, and The Messiah and the Sovereign: The Problem of Law in Walter Benjamin in Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy.

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that guides a great deal of The Time That Remains is, as Agamben attests from the outset, indebted to Taubes lectures on Paul. Agambens text functions as something like a philosophical supplement to Taubes comments on messianism as well as his identification of Schmitt as an "apocalyptician of the counter-revolution." In the context of the theological-political problem of authority, Taubes and Agamben both proclaim themselves as something like starting players for Team Benjamin, critically engaging the figure of the katechon in Schmitt from a Messianic perspective in order to offer a deconstructive reading of the Pauline regard for earthly authority. Thus our reading of the katechon in Schmitt and his interlocutors can now function as a pivotal point upon which we can turn to discuss in greater detail the role of authority in twentieth-century writings on the political valences of the messianic.

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46